Automatic reconstruction of 3D building models from scanned 2D floor plans

The overall energy efficiency of existing buildings has to be significantly improved to comply with emerging regulations and to contribute to overcoming current environmental challenges. Many policies aim at accelerating the renovation rate. The effectiveness of renovation actions could be significantly improved through the systematic use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools and Building Information Modeling (BIM). But these solutions rely on full-fledged digital models, which, for most buildings, are not available. The present article introduces a research work aiming at the development of methods for the generation of 3D building models from 2D plans. The developed prototype is able to extract information from 2D plans and to generate IFC (Industry Foundation Classes)-compliant 3D models that include the main components of the building: walls, openings, and spaces. The article also presents the results of a quantitative assessment of the platform capabilities and performances, relying on a database of 90 real architectural floor plans. The results are very promising and show that such solutions could be key components of future digital toolkits for renovation design. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.